


Over The Crushed Ice

by paperclipbitch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Human, Gen, M/M, MCU AU Fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4187613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That’s Loki Laufeyson,” Angie replied, reaching for a bottle of kahlua.  “You’ve seen him falling out of every single bar in this city, usually accompanied by underwear models.”  She screwed up her nose.  “I don’t know how he gets hold of that many underwear models, actually, he must have some agency’s number.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over The Crushed Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> Written for **aurilly** for the MCU AU fest. I had fun with this; I'd possibly like to revisit this 'verse sometime :D

Steve’s told Bucky he doesn’t have to worry about paying toward any of the bills, now that Steve’s at least a semi-successful artist, instead of a starving-in-a-garret artist – great on lots of levels, and not just because Bucky has no idea what the hell a garret actually _is_ – but there was only so much lying around on the couch Bucky could do before he felt like he might start losing his mind. Again. Well, okay, Sam says not to refer to it as _losing his mind_ , but Bucky is afraid of backsliding into being like when he first got back home, monosyllabic and miserable, days slipping into each other and nights just getting worse and worse.

Anyway, now those days seem to be mostly behind him, Bucky isn’t willing to just spend his time wearing bad sweaters and eating cereal at weird hours in Steve’s apartment; besides, no matter how generous Steve is, Bucky knows that he can’t support both of them on a salary of irregular artistic employment, and the royalties of two different children’s picture books.

What all this has ultimately led to is now: vodka trickling down his elbow from not screwing a cocktail shaker tight enough, while Sif props her chin on a casual hand and raises an amused eyebrow at him.

“I’m pretty sure I ordered something with gin in it,” she says.

“This isn’t even a drink for you,” Bucky responds, and: “go back to annoying Fandral already.”

Sif flutters her eyelashes and keeps watching him, while Bucky remakes Cosmopolitans for that group of shrieking young women over in the corner booth and then starts adding in the ingredients for a Dark and Stormy. 

On the whole, Bucky likes bartending: he doesn’t mind meeting new people, or pouring said new people into cabs at the end of the night; people think his haircut – or lack thereof – is bohemian and cool instead of lazy, and he’s always been flirtatious enough to clean up on tips. Making overpriced drinks for people willing to pay for them and wearing skinny jeans in a place where the music doesn’t suck is an okay way to spend his nights, at least until he gets his shit sorted out and finishes adjusting to civilian life and maybe picks one of those actual careers that Steve keeps gently dropping into conversation. No pressure, just gentle support, and it makes Bucky want to hug him and strangle him in vaguely equal proportion; Sam says that this is completely normal, but Bucky doesn’t see his future in talking other guys through PTSD. 

Right now, his future mostly entails the skinny guy walking through the door, eyes skimming over the place in a cross between disinterest and disdain, things Bucky didn’t realise were so markedly different until Loki Laufeyson came sauntering in on his third day here and Angie groaned between her teeth.

(“He looks… familiar,” Bucky said carefully, because the tall guy with a scarf that probably cost more than Steve’s apartment _did_ look like someone he’d seen before. He was definitely too rich to have been present during those awkward years of irresponsible promiscuity that Bucky should probably have documented at the time and forgot to – it’s lead to some really _difficult_ conversations in the years since; and he thought New York was supposed to have enough people in it that you’d never run into one night stands _ever again_ – and in the last few years he’d been too busy either actively serving or staring at the ceilings of military hospitals to engage properly with people he didn’t already know.

“That’s Loki Laufeyson,” Angie replied, reaching for a bottle of kahlua. “You’ve seen him falling out of every single bar in this city, usually accompanied by underwear models.” She screwed up her nose. “I don’t know how he gets hold of that many underwear models, actually, he must have some agency’s number.”

And, yeah, there it was, clicking into place: Odin Borson, founder of the Asgard Corporation, has the kind of money that makes Donald Trump look broke, and his sons are forever turning up in newspapers and magazines and on gossip websites, looking ludicrously attractive and various kinds of earnest or debauched, depending on whether it’s Thor or Loki. 

“He hasn’t brought the underwear models with him tonight,” Bucky observed.

“Pity,” Angie remarked, and then turned her attention back to the White Russians she was preparing. “Anyway, good luck with your impending baptism of fire.”

“I thought I’d had my baptism of fire on the first night with that tray of Flaming Lamborghinis,” Bucky replies.

“That was just some mild singeing, Loki Laufeyson’s a whole other thing,” Angie replied, and shoved him toward where Loki was sauntering up to the bar.

Bucky looked up into a pair of sharp eyes, and scraped together a smile.)

Loki’s eyes alight on Sif, and his lips curl. Sif and Loki’s relationship makes very little sense to Bucky and seems to entail the two of them being either frostily polite or civilly hostile to each other, depending on what day it is. Still, they buy a lot of drinks while they do it, and both of them tip extremely well, and they’re not exactly difficult on the eyes either. Bucky has regulars he hates a whole bunch more.

 

“Still calling yourself ‘Bucky’?” Loki asks, sliding onto a barstool one away from Sif: a deliberately careful distance, though probably not one far enough away to stop her pegging him with cocktail olives if she chooses to; you’d think he would have learned by now.

“Still calling yourself ‘Loki’?” Bucky responds, pouring out the Dark and Stormy and passing it to Sif, who manages an easy mix between a smile and an eyeroll, before she slips off her stool and stalks over to where Fandral is lounging in a booth, gaze fixed on what is presumably tindr. Whether they’re friends or dating or banging or none of the above, Bucky still doesn’t know: this rich British friendship group makes his head hurt, and she and Angie have a running bet in the hope some of these things might get clarified sometime.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Loki responds easily, accepting the whisky Bucky places in front of him without acknowledgement.

The lengths that Loki goes to to piss off his adopted father are, frankly, very impressive. The rebellious phase that Steve and Loki went through in their teens wasn’t that rebellious with hindsight, but even if it had been, Loki’s calculated plan to throw as much shit at Odin Borson as he can manage would always outshine it. He’s not yet been disowned – presumably because none of his bile is aimed at his mother – but he’s definitely deeply settled into his role as the Black Sheep of the family. Part of Bucky suspects that Loki picked the role out for himself before he was ever actually cast in it; Loki has that look about him.

“Have you ever done a good deed?” Bucky can’t stop himself asking; he was given the _how to talk to bar patrons_ speech on his first night, complete with horrifying roleplaying, but those rules don’t really seem to apply to Loki – or to Angie, for that matter, who serves drinks with a sharp smile and eyes that say if anyone tries to chat to her cleavage, no matter how drunk they are, they’ll find themselves barred for life.

Loki waves vague fingers. “I’m sure I’ve read about them somewhere. Thor’s probably done some.”

Loki’s brother is incredibly, incredibly blonde, and giant in a way that dwarfs even Steve, and charming in a labrador sort of way. Bucky’s met him mostly because _someone_ occasionally has to get Loki home, after an evening of drinking and disparaging his family and flirting with Bucky in a way that may or may not be flirting; Bucky really cannot get a read on him, but anyone who looks at his ass in jeans that often has to be some degree of interested. Thor would probably be the more sensible brother to have an inconvenient sort-of maybe crush on, but then Bucky’s never exactly been sensible: just ask Steve. Once he’s finished laughing, he’ll agree.

“Is that what he’s done to piss you off this week?” Bucky asks, aiming for innocent and probably going a bit wide of the mark. If he _really_ wanted to, he could probably catch up with the ins and outs of the Asgard Corporation, its employees and board of directors, online; but then he’d feel weird about it, and he already feels pretty weird about the way all other customers cease to exist for him the minute Loki walks in. Angie lets him get away with it; Jarvis is less inclined to, but then Jarvis takes his job a lot more seriously than Angie does.

“Perhaps we’re living in a happy Hallmark card this week,” Loki suggests, eyes glittering.

“You did storm out of a family brunch into a storm of paparazzi two days ago,” Bucky reminds him; yeah, he doesn’t stalk Loki, but he’s got _eyes_ and Angie’s got no scruples about googling their regulars. 

“I looked ravishing while I was doing it,” Loki responds easily, and when Bucky’s finished pouring him another drink, he adds: “you can leave the bottle. Put it on my tab.”

“You don’t have a tab!” Bucky calls, futilely, after him, as he walks over to join Fandral and Sif.

“No wonder the Asgard Corporation has such good stocks,” Angie remarks, “he’s been getting free drinks out of us for months.”

The rest of the night is fairly stress free: someone tries paying with what turns out to be a stolen Stark Industries expenses card, but Bucky has their CEO on speed dial after that business with Tony Stark here a couple of months back, and it all gets dealt with without Bucky having to rugby tackle anyone in the street afterwards. The little knot of people Bucky tells himself he isn’t watching is eventually joined by Hogun, who is typically monosyllabic and will only drink straight vodka, and Fandral drinks about six Pina Coladas in a row before Sif drags him outside and forces him into a cab. The rest of their customers come and go in waves of giggles, demands and vague drunken rambling, and it starts getting late enough for Bucky to start daydreaming about getting home, where Steve will inevitably still be sketching out his latest pages as a guest artist for an indie comics house, because Steve has no grip on time once he starts working. There’ll probably be time for late night toast before at least one of them crashes out.

Bucky’s just bringing out a new tray of glasses when he sees Loki has arrived back at the bar again, leaning on it in a casually louche fashion that doesn’t look deliberate but which must’ve taken practice. 

“Pretty sure I can’t give you any more free booze and keep my job,” he says.

Loki’s smile is loose, less brittle; probably the effects of alcohol, and possibly the effect of spending a couple of hours with people he isn’t related to. He waves a folded napkin in Bucky’s direction. “You may as well just give me your phone number.”

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one getting numbers on napkins?” Bucky asks, to cover the feel of the world sliding a little under his feet. Angie is very studiously wiping up a spill a few feet away; the bar underneath her hand is already completely dry.

Loki tips his head. “You’re a not-unattractive bartender who makes a crap Bloody Mary,” he says. Loki has never ordered a Bloody Mary from Bucky, but he’s not actually wrong. “I imagine you do alright for yourself. But I don’t leave my number lying around after that ridiculous debacle with the _Vanity Fair_ journalist that I’m sure you’ll pretend you didn’t read about.”

Bucky gives in, like he knew he would, and scrawls his number onto the napkin Loki is proffering. He could elect not to, of course, but Loki’s been coming in here for months and if he just wanted to fuck a bartender, there are quicker places to make that happen.

“Oh good,” Loki says, folding the napkin and tucking it into his coat. “I don’t have to develop some kind of drinking problem by coming in here several times a week.”

Bucky smiles, almost despite himself. “Are you just doing this as the next way to piss off your father?” he asks.

Loki shrugs. “What do you think?”

Bucky looks at Loki, shirt collar unbuttoned and hair just a little too long. “I think,” he says, “you can take me for dinner while I figure it out.”


End file.
